Science Feeds

Hydrogen. In its most abundant form, one proton, one electron. The lightest and most plentiful element that there is. When we think of the elements, we think of them objectively – something that is studied in science lessons, whose structures we reduce to simple lines and curves. There’s a deeper story to the elements, though, one that permeates our very being. It’s not just that we ourselves are created from them; everything that it means to be human, from our bodies, to our modern technological way of life, is because of 94 simple elements.94 elements is the brain child of filmmaker Mike Paterson, and is a multi-year, multinational project aimed at telling the story of what it means to be human, through the eyes of the 94 naturally-occuring elements, from Hydrogen to Plutonium. The first four videos have already been made, and over the coming weeks I’d like to showcase them with facts and figures about the elements themselves.Here’s the trailer:And if you would like to know more about the project, check out the project home page and the fundraising page.

Climate Change and science communicators might want to lend an ear to the public voice.TweetAccording to a 2005 article by Thomas Brewer, a “substantial majority of the US public wants the government to do more about the problem of global warming…”, by for example enforcing mandatory emission reductions by industry and economic assistance of mitigation projects. This state of public opinion is a far cry from what many climate scientists and communicators subscribe to. By focusing on failures of traditional media sources to portray the scientific consensus and gravity of climate change and on the renegade efforts of big oil and gas corporations to combat ‘green’ activism (Nisbet, 2011), scientists and science communicators may be failing to investigate and communicate an element of key importance… the actual opinion of the public, not only of the media, on climate change policies.bq. “There is … evidence that many US leaders remain unaware of the extent of public support for more action, and of public opposition to recent US [e.g. Bush] administration policies…. The national administration during 2001-2004 and many members of Congress have not only been outside that public consensus but are perhaps not aware of it. The consensus-building process for support for climate change mitigation thus appears to have progressed more than is commonly recognized.” Brewer, 2005, p. 359, emphasis added.What if Congress and business leaders DID know of the widespread public support for climate change policies? Would they act upon it? If they do know, why AREN’T they acting upon it?What does public opinion look like on global climate change?According to a March 2012 Gallup Poll, nearly 60% of a national population sample thought that most scientists believe that global warming is occurring, with only 7% thinking that scientists believe it is not occurring. According to this poll, 55% of respondents personally worry about global warming more than a fair amount, 84% feel that they understand the issue fairly or very well, and even 63% responded (in a January AARP Election Survey) that global warming would be somewhat or very important in choosing who to vote for in the upcoming 2012 Presidential election. (I was personally pleasantly surprised by this last statistic). Although there is ‘room to grow’ metaphorically speaking of public opinion on climate change, the state of affairs might be better than some scientists think… and much better than many politicians are acting upon.The state of public opinion may look even better when considering other environmental issues: 71% of March 2012 Gallup Poll respondents indicated that they worried about air pollution more than a fair amount, and 78% indicated that they worried about pollution of drinking water a fair amount or a great deal. Air pollution and pollution of drinking water are certainly strongly related to the threats of climate change, although how much the public recognizes this link is largely unknown.bench/assetsc/2012/05/Smog over Santiago-thumb-500×370-4669.jpg" width=“500” height=“370” class=“mt-image-center” style=“text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;” /> Smog over SantiagoIn a striking indication of public support not reflected in Congress, a late 2002-2003 poll by the University of Oregon Survey Research Lab found that of the 92% of respondents who had heard of global warming before, 88% favored US participation in/approval of the Kyoto Protocol for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Somewhat surprisingly, the support was fairly consistent across political parties: 94% of Democrats supported it, 88% of Independents supported it, and 83% of Republicans supported it (Brewer, 2005, p. 366). On top of these opinions, Brewer (2005) points out that according to 2002 polls, 76% of respondents “preferred that the ‘government set standards that require industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions’” and 79% favored ‘spending more government money on developing solar and wind power, with only 19% favoring government support of increased drilling for oil and natural gas (Gallup, 2002; Reuters, 2002).But what did Congress do? Marked lack of support for such policies… Brewer (2005) pointed to a marked gap and trailing behind of elite opinions on these issues as compared to public opinions. **Wake up Congress and both political and scientific elites: It’s time to harness public opinion on global warming that has already been moving in the right direction for years now…**Climate science communicators, by building effective and publically-informed communications on climate change, could perhaps further and substantially improve public opinion toward climate change action if their communications captured the large population of citizens who are moderately concerned about global warming_:bq. “The future of US government policies will depend partly on … how much the opinions of this moderately concerned group in the middle change and how influential they become, as the consensus-formation process continues to unfold.” Brewer, 2005, p. 373.References:AARP Election Issues Survey, Jan, 2012. Retrieved May-1-2012 from the iPOLL Databank, The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut. http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.htmlGallup Poll, Mar, 2012. Retrieved May-1-2012 from the iPOLL Databank, The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut. http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/dataaccess/ipoll/ipoll.html Brewer, T. L. (2005). US public opinion on climate change issues: implications for consensus-building and policymaking. Climate Policy, 4(4), 359-376.

SUMMARY: Is there structure in randomness? According to a mathematical proof published by 2012 Abel Prize winner, Endre Szemerédi, yes, there is I can’t believe I didn’t tell you about this before, so I am going to remedy this situation right now. There are several major international prizes for mathematics: the Fields Medal is awarded once every four years to two, three, or four mathematicians who are under 40 years of age. The other is the Abel Prize, which is awarded every year by the King of Norway to one or more mathematicians for a career of outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics, and it comes with a monetary award of 6 million Kroner (more than $1 million US). Since the Abel Prize has no age restrictions, it resembles the Nobel Prize and thus, is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize in mathematics”. Indeed, the original inspiration for the Abel Prize was the Nobels: when it was first learned that Alfred Nobel had no plans to initiate a prize for mathematics, the Abel Prize was established to fill in that gap.

Engaging the public with science blogging?TweetAccording to Inna Kouper (2010), a blog is a “frequently updated webpage that facilitates informal communication between the author of the blog and its audience” with science blogs serving as a relatively new form of media and powerful tool for disseminating scientific information and facilitating conversations about science (p. 2; Batts, Anthis, and Smith, 2008). I hope that From The Lab Bench can achieve a degree of public engagement of non-scientists in science. According to Kouper (2010), science bloggers seeking to facilitate public involvement in science should “inform their readers about scientific news … explain complicated matters in a manner understandable by a lay person … evaluate research findings and claims made by others … [and] articulate their position toward controversial issues” (p. 2). Do I achieve public involvement with From The Lab Bench? Can science blogs even truly achieve this goal? What do you think? Tweet @FromTheLabBench with hashtag #ScienceCares.And for a bit of visual pleasure… From The Lab Bench’s ‘Wordle’ for this month!

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup

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Last night I was a judge for the Data Viz Competition at the NYC Data Hackathon,part of the world’s first global data hackathon. Along with my fellow judgesCathy O’Neil and Jake Porway, we gave an award to the team that best found a nontrivial insight from the data provided for the competition and managed torender that insight visually. Unlike a hackNY hackathon, where the energy is pretty high and the crowdmuch younger (hackNY hackathons are for full time students only; this crowdall were out of school — in fact at least one person was a professor), hereeveryone was really heads down. There was plenty of conversation and smilesbut people were working quite hard, even 12 hours into the hackathon.I noticed two things that were unusual about the participants, both of which Ithink speak well of the state of `data science’ in NYC:* I’ve never been in a room with such a health mix of Wall Street quants andstartup data scientists. Many of the teams included a mix of people from differentsectors working together. The winning team was typical in this way: 1 person fromWall Street; 1 freelancer; and 1 data scientist from an established NYC startup.* I met multiple people visiting from the Bay Area contemplating moving to NYC.In 2004-2007 many of my students from Columbia moved out to SF under the historicalnotion that that was `the place’ where they could work at a small company that would demand their technical masteryand give them sufficient autonomy to see their work come to light under their own direction.I was glad to meet people from the Bay Area who were sufficiently impressed with NYC’s data sceneto consider moving here. Of course I told them it was exactly the right thing to doand I looked forward to seeing them again soon once they’d become naturalized citizens of NYC.Huge thanks to Shivon Zils and Matt Truck for hosting us in such a nice location, to Jeremy Howard for his suggestion a few weeks ago to throw the event, and to Max Shronfor encouraging everyone to include a visualization prize as part of this event.

If you read recent scientific papers and popular scientific books, developing talent seems easy: just find great teachers and spend 10,000 hours honing the craft of your choice (see for example http://thedanplan.com/blog.php). Still, there remains one harrowing question: why would anyone spend 10,000 hours working single-mindedly on a single subject? Few things would seem more laborious or more boring. The true riddle of excellence may therefore not be how excellence is achieved, but how people can find the motivation to sacrifice so much of their life to the pursuit of perfection.

To understand talent, one must therefore first understand motivation. Unfortunately, motivation seems much harder to understand than the ‘mere’ learning aspects of talent. Some motivations seem to be biologically evolved for good reasons: we approach nice food and attractive others of the opposite sex, and try to avoid pain. Social motivation may have a similar evolutionary explanation: being left alone by your group was suicidal in the recent evolutionary past, so being a valued group member was important. This would explain why motivation also thrives on receiving attention and encouragement from important others in one’s life, even vicariously by seeing for example sport stars or singers being celebrated by the media and surrounded by adoring fans. We know that if one’s environment encourages a certain activity for a very long time, things that people first just do for attention or praise become goals all by themselves (in psychology-speak this is called ‘internalized’).

Still, that doesn’t explain all motivation. Motivation is enhanced by fast feedback (hence the popularity of computer gaming as a hobby relative to growing bonsai trees), by challenge, and by having clear goals. None of those would seem directly biologically or socially relevant.

In this post, I’d like to consider the hypothesis that at least part of the hard-to-explain other motivational factors may be explainable by assuming that motivation interacts with attention similar to other bodily signals: not one-directional but bidirectional. So, while it seems logical that being motivated increases the attention you pay to something, it may very well be that if you pay attention to things, you may thereby also increase your motivation for them.

Biologically and psychologically, such an “inverse causation” would not be that far-fetched; after all, we know that if your frown muscles are frozen by botox, you take longer to interpret sad or angry sentences. Similarly, it is hard to be angry when you lie down and relax all your muscles, moving marbles from a high to a low shelf makes us more likely to recollect sad memories, bending your arm at the elbow makes you more likely to purchase things impulsively, and sitting in a pose like Rodin’s ‘thinker’ makes people more creative. In the psychological literature, this effect is called “proprioceptive psychology”.

For motivation something similar may happen. For example, when you’re hungry, you’ll notice more food stalls; but conversely, if you put a jar of candy on your desk, you are more likely to feel ‘like a bite’. But more important than that, paying attention to something may convince the brain that it is important! If something is challenging, you need to pay attention since otherwise it will go wrong. If you have clear goals, you are also more likely to pay attention as you must monitor whether your actions bring you closer to the goal. Feedback is a change in the environment, which would also impinge automatically on our attentional systems; and hence motivate us.

A ‘motivation through attention’-rule may also help explain why promising an attractive reward for performing well can undermine intrinsic motivation: thinking of the reward diminishes attention to the task at hand. It also helps explain why people generally don’t feel very happy when they daydream, but feel a lot happier when talking with others: talking with others demands much more attention than daydreaming, and may therefore be more fun. Motivation through attention also neatly ties in with the ‘situational interest’ effect where teachers lay the groundwork of motivating students for their subject by presenting it in an engaging way. Using relevance, mystery, and loud explosions (or sex stories, like Paul McCartney’s English teacher did with the Canterbury tales) may initially just draw attention, but this ‘superficial’ attention, when maintained long enough, is slowly converted into implicit interest in the subject, ‘personal’ interest, also known as the holy grail of motivation: intrinsic motivation.

The most interesting implication of the ‘motivation through attention’ hypothesis would be that if you can direct your attention well, you can become motivated for/interested in almost anything. If that is true, however, most people apparently either do not know how to do direct their attention well enough to become motivated in their lives or their jobs, or for some reason choose not to do so.

But say that you seem to be stuck in a certain job or scientific field and you don’t know what to do outside that? Would it be possible to increase motivation by increasing how much attention you pay to it? At the moment my answer would be: probably yes. You may also want to increase motivation by more ‘traditional’ means (try to learn as much about the job as possible and surround yourself with enthusiastic people, for example, see also one of my earlier posts). But it also seems possible to direct your attention. The secret seems to be that attention doesn’t respond very well to commands (‘watch this!’ ‘pay attention’), but it does respond to clear questions (‘what do you think will happen?’, ‘how high does the ball bounce?’ ‘Which things here seem out of the ordinary?’).

So, if you want to increase your motivation, the answer may be the question.

Wordplay aside, if you learn to direct your attention well as a scientist, more things than ‘just’ your motivation may blossom. But that will be the subject of my next post.

David Suzuki is a icon for the Canadian environmental movement. He's like our Al Gore and Rachel Carson all rolled up into one. I read and reviewed his memoirs a while back and they are terrific.

When he talks, sensible people listen.

This blog post by Suzuki and Ian Hanington hit my in box this morning: Environmental rules should be better, not easier
Few people would argue against making environmental review processes and regulations more efficient -- as long as they're effective. But changes announced in the recent federal budget don't do that. Instead, they make it easier for the federal government and industry to push through projects that could harm the environment and the economy, and limit the ability of ordinary Canadian citizens to have a say in matters of national importance.

*snip*

Eliminating environmental reviews for some projects altogether, shifting responsibility to the provinces, and severely cutting back on staff and agencies that provide management and information are not ways to make processes more efficient; they're ways to accelerate approval of major projects, making the short-term interests of industry a higher priority than protecting the air, land, and water we all need to stay healthy.

*snip*

We all want a free and democratic country with a healthy environment and strong economy. The best way to guarantee that is to encourage scientific research and knowledge, open discourse, and respect for a range of viewpoints. There are ways we can improve efficiency of decision-making, such as clearer environmental rules. Sometimes -- but not always -- it may take longer to reach a decision, but at least we'd be confident it is made in the best interests of all Canadians.

It's a terrific and compelling call to do environmental reviews the right way -- the way that maximizes human values and not just economic ones. And sadly, that doesn't seem to be the path that the current Canadian government is following.

For those that are interested, I will keep on doing these "Canadian War on Science" posts intermittently. I have ones coming up highlight issues with the fisheries and with arctic research. And more, actually. Sadly this particular government is a bonanza for this sort of thing.

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I’m a fan of good quality graphs, and some just stand out. Including this one, from PLoS Biology last year:

Just a quick note to mention that I’ve been taking part in an Olympic-themed I’m a Scientist: Get me out of here! event this week, an X-factor style science communication competition being run by the folks over at the Wellcome Trust. It’s 10 weeks of questions and live chats from students around the country, who can ask any and all questions about how the mind and body work, as well as general sciencey sorts of stuff. If you’re a scientist involved in sports, psychology, or movement science, then they’re still looking for participants! I’ve just come to the end of my first week, and it’s been pretty intense, but absolutely great fun. Here are some of my favourite questions from the week:Is beetroot juice banned in the Olympics due to the extra muscle power it can add? what is the best thing you have found out as a scientist? how much burgers or hot dogs can you eat before you have a stroke or heart attack? who is your favourite scientist? << and I really meant my answer about Gru for that one.Normal service will resume next week. In the meantime, why don’t you check out the new Nature Network blog from one of last year’s I’m a Scientist winners, Suzi Gage?

SUMMARY: A glimpse at Cal Academy’s butterfly collection and a discussion about why these butterfly collections are important to science Do you like butterflies and moths? I certainly do. When I was a graduate student, part of my graduate training was invested in studying moths. So captivated by moths and butterflies was I that I seriously considered devoting my professional career to studying them. But butterflies and moths — the lepidopterans — are more than just pretty insects that pollinate plants. They are important research subjects that provide valuable glimpses into evolutionary processes. They provide scientists with important insights into sexual selection, speciation, and the relationship between ecology and evolution and between genetics and evolution.

Recently I feel a little like the rug has been pulled out from under my feet. I’m referring to revelations (uncovered by speaking to friends and when ‘researching’ (read: looking on Wikipedia) an answer for ’I’m a Scientist’ last year) about two of my firmest held beliefs from my psychology studies. Specifically, two case studies so well known they are simply referred to by their names. Kitty Genovese and Phineas Gage.These are stalwarts of (I’m willing to wager) almost every undergraduate Psychology degree in the country, if not the world. Kitty Genovese was the New York lady who was brutally murdered in 1964, as 38 neighbours and bystanders did nothing. Phineas had an unfortunate accident with a tamping iron whilst building a railway, the rod passed through his frontal lobe, and the resulting damage taught undergraduates like myself that this brain area was the home of the personality.Kitty Genovese’s murder was tragic for a number of reasons. Her killer was actually scared off by shouts or movements from her neighbours, and she almost escaped to the safety of her building, but was thwarted by a locked door, and weakened having already been stabbed. Newspaper reports at the time painted a picture of a group of 38 neighbours who were all aware she was being attacked by did nothing to help. In fact, a recent paper (Manning et al., 2007) has documented how these newspaper reports, exaggerating the facts, have started a snowball rolling; Latané and Darley’s (1970) ‘bystander effect’ was found to be robust and compelling, and the story of Kitty’s murder inspiring these experiments is really neat, and has pervaded popular culture from graphic novels to folk songs inspired by her.But the facts about the story, presented by Manning, seem to be somewhat different from the ‘good Samaritan parable’ that is printed in Psychology textbooks. Firstly, the witnesses could not all see, some could only hear screams or a scuffle. In particular, the final attack took place in a secluded place visible only to a few people. The witnesses also claim they called the police immediately after the first attack. The figure ‘38’ came from a policeman saying “I believe that many people heard the screams…It could have been more than 38”. Manning paints a compelling picture from police reports at the time suggesting witnesses could not see the severity of the situation, and far from doing nothing, made calls to the police and succeeded in scaring her attacker away once, while not seeing him return later to murder Kitty.Now, I’ll admit, despite my youthful looking face, that this paper came out a while after I’d finished my Undergraduate course, but I’d love to know from lecturers or students whether this case study is still used.Now to Phineas, who I’ve always had a soft spot for, due to our sharing a surname. Somewhat of an older case study, his accident occurred in 1848. He was a fit, active 25 year old, and despite blasting a large iron rod through his head, he was speaking and walking within minutes, and completely conscious as he travelled to get medical attention. There’s a particularly gory description of this on Wikipedia, my favourite section being a quote from the first doctor who saw him; ‘Mr. G. got up and vomited; the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor’. Yuk!This is where the story in text books departs from what’s known. I recall being told during my studies that Phineas became a different man after the accident. He couldn’t hold a job, he became more bawdy, had difficulty behaving appropriately for the situation that he was in, became more impulsive, less inhibited, and started lying or confabulating.The evidence appears to be somewhat less conclusive. It took Phineas a long time to recover. Despite his initial ability to walk and talk straight after the incident, his doctor’s notes suggest he was semi-comatose for a week afterwards, and was only able to return to his parents’ house after a couple of months. However, the evidence that his personality was so negatively affected is much less obvious. It is somewhat unsurprising that he didn’t go back to his work on the railway; however well he recovered, he only had one eye now, and he had a hole in his skull! Reports suggesting he mistreated his wife and child are clearly untrue, as records show Phineas did not have either.A book about inaccuracies in the reporting of Gage’s personality changes was first published in 2000, (just) before I went to University, so I can understand why this knowledge may not have made it in to text books by the time I started, but in this book there’s a report of a British psychologist Ferrier, who in 1877 expressed concern about misreporting and exaggeration in this case!Should teaching Undergraduates the facts about these cases get in the way of a good story, or is it OK to use these apocryphal examples to teach about psychological phenomena that do seem to stand up to rigorous experimentation? I can see the argument either way, these stories certainly stuck in my mind, and the underlying ‘bystander apathy’ and frontal lobe function are well known from multiple evidence sources. In these days of ubiquitous knowledge at the end of an Ethernet cable, the truth will out though, so should Psychology text books catch up? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter!(image From the collection of Jack and Beverly Wilgus.)

A paper in this week's issue of Nature and a commentary on Revkin's DotEarth blog reinforces the argument that a hybrid path in agriculture -- incorporating both conventional and organic production practices -- gives the best chance of feeding some 9 billion people by midcentury in an ecologically-based manner.

The thoughtful and comprehensive study compares yields in organic and conventional systems and addresses the criticisms of an earlier study by Badgley et al (for problems with the earlier study, see the supplementary discussion in Seufert et al).

The organic agriculture movement has been important because it has brought consumer attention to the overuse of some pesticides and fertilizers. It has also raised awareness of the need to foster soil fertility. But organic farming practices are just part of a future sustainable agriculture. Just like conventional farmers, organic farmers face pests that are difficult to control or environmental stresses that can affect yield. For example, strawberries are highly susceptible to soil born diseases. Currently both conventional and organic growers purchase clonally propagated seedlings that were fumigated with methyl bromide, an insecticide known to increase the risk of prostrate cancer. Unlike conventional growers, organic growers do not use methyl bromide in the field. To reduce infection, they rotate strawberries with another crop, such as broccoli (a less valuable crop). The trade off to the grower is that yields of organic strawberries are lower. And the consumer pays higher prices for organic strawberries. Clearly, we need better methods to control strawberry diseases that will benefit both conventional and organic production.

Although the Seufert et al study shows that yields on organic farms are generally lower than most conventional farms (with important exceptions that the authors discuss), this yield differential will change with time. On the one hand, as Seufert et al point out, improvements in management techniques that address factors limiting yields in organic systems will enhance the yield of organic systems. On the other hand, because organic farmers are prohibited from using genetically engineered crops, they will not be able to reap the benefits of new crop varieties that assimilate nitrogen more efficiently, that are resistant to disease or tolerant of drought. For example, genetically engineered papaya in Hawaii yields 20x more than organic papaya (note, it appears that papaya was not included in the Suefert et al study). This is because there is no organic method to control a devastating viral disease that has infected papaya. At the other extreme, Suefert et al show that yields of other organic fruit and oilseed crops show very little yield differences with conventional crops. Clearly it is impossible to say which farming system is "better". Each crop and faming system must be evaluated on a case by case basis.

The study points to the need to drop the ideologically charged "organic vs. conventional" debate and instead focus on what matters: the need to reduce the use of the most toxic insecticides, produce food more efficiently using less land and water and to enhance food security in the poorest regions of the world.

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SUMMARY: This video presents an animated exploration of the famous and fascinating Fermi Paradox Given the vast number of planets in the universe, many much older than Earth, why haven’t we yet seen obvious signs of alien life? The potential answers to this question are numerous and intriguing, alarming and hopeful. This video presents an animated exploration of the famous and fascinating Fermi Paradox, originally posed in 1950 by physicist Enrico Fermi, which basically states:

Last week I showed how should you pay for a homeopathic pharmacy.Now let’s see, what you got for your money:TweetIf you happen to have undergraduates at your lab (or you are one), you should check out this brilliant poster.

(or: Foot stamping) I caught this week’s Beyond Belief on BBC Radio 4, and suffered again the Christian extravasations of John Lennox. Listen (from @ 0:07:15) to his sought, considered, respected opinion as he declares…bq. “It seems to me Newton is immensely important as evidence for what we’re talking about today [Argument for first cause], because when he discovered his law of gravitation… his response was, ‘What a wonderful god he is who did it that way!’"This is evidence alright… for Newton’s zealous faith.bq. “He wrote the Principia Mathematica … with the express wish that it would convince the thinking person to believe in God."He wrote it in Latin. Unashamedly not overly-concerned with accessibility to the heathen, then.Communicating Newton’s immense scientific achievements and his impact on the scientific method is one laudable thing; but allying them to his multifarious (often crackpot) beliefs – though historically interesting from the point of view of how they imaginatively informed (or otherwise) his scientific inspiration – has no scientific merit. So, as Lennox is afforded repeat platform to mis-communicate the supernatural applicability of science, I will use my platform here to repeat my self, and alleviate my sulking irritation at the repeated ignoring of my efforts to get the Leicester Mercury to take my further re-edited, re-resubmitted and re-rejected contra-apologetic argument.Because I happen to consider it (no less) valid. Thank you for reading. ___________________________________________________________________________We are all, to some extent, ‘philosophers’, in that we tend to advocate our view of life and the world. However, most of us have neither studied philosophy, nor do we spend much time critically examining our own reasoning. We thus tend not to consider that much of the information in our minds is false and highly susceptible to our culture and belief system. Everybody likes to have their beliefs, their opinions, their prejudices confirmed, and is inclined to reject arguments against them.Yet we are often impressed when supposed pearls of wisdom emanate from public figures. Notorious Premier League footballer Joey Barton likes to tweet the occasional profound lyric or philosophical quote. This propensity seems to have partly restored his reputation in the eyes of a fickle public. But is he any more ludicrous than those who adopt the theological tactic known as apologetics?Deriving from the Greek apologia, meaning ‘reasoned defence’, apologetics is a branch of theology concerned with the defence and proof of Christianity. It becomes problematic when science gets called as witness.Christian apologists like to argue, often with cherry-picked philosophical quotations, the supernatural significance of the discoveries of great (religious) scientists, such as Isaac Newton. Science is glorified for its triumphant revealing of the workings of God’s universe. Apologetic ‘reasoning’ holds that all scientists are, wittingly or unwittingly, investigating not merely the natural world, but ’God’s plan.’ But those scientists who argue to the contrary are hypocritically reminded of the natural limitations of (their) science.It seems the capacity of science depends on the beliefs of those doing it – if you believe you are researching God’s handiwork, then it is God’s handiwork you will see. As an academic pursuit, this apologetic merging of faith and science becomes ‘philosophy’. Or theology. Whatever, it generates statements which are potentially highly misleading.Misappropriation of scientific laws as ‘evidence’ for the existence of an agent who set those laws in place does not follow scientifically. Whilst it has to be acknowledged that the religious belief of Newton and others was a driver for modern science, their pioneering of the mathematical explanation of the universe does not constitute retrospective evidence for ‘God.’ Quite right to recognise Newton’s brilliance as a scientist and mathematician. But appealing to the faith of great scientists does not a scientific argument make. Philosophical quotes, whether from pseudo-intellectuals or serious intellectual scholars, often draw admiring gasps, or approving nods of recognition. But they do not necessarily convey ‘truth’. Barton’s street philosophy makes for an occasionally refreshing change from the robotic, cliché-recycling footballer. But religious misappropriation of science is pseudoscience – a cardinal sin for any scientist.

My frustrations for the day – I’m co-author on a manuscript submitted to PLoS. We’re now trying to upload the final version but we’re hitting silly problems that are caused by PLoS seemingly being beholden to Microsoft.

SUMMARY: In this video, we go on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Big Bone Room at the American Museum of Natural History to look at sauropod bones Wouldn’t you love to go on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Big Bone Room at the American Museum of Natural History? In this video, Paleontology Collections Manager Carl Mehling shows us a few fossil treasures, such as the bony beak of a triceratops, the original model of T. rex, which was used to figure out how to mount the real specimen, and one of the largest intact dinosaur bones in the world, the 650-pound thigh bone of the long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur Camarasaurus.

Yes, it was a crime; it was a crime against nature and against the law of the land, and now the first criminal charges are being filed, according to an exclusive report at NPR.

"The first criminal charges in connection with the BP oil spill have been filed against a former BP engineer named Kurt Mix," NPR's Carrie Johnson reports exclusively.

Carrie just told our Newscast unit that Mix has been charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly deleting text messages after the spill. The texts were related to the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf. Mix will make his first appearence in court today.

Go read about it here.

Update from the Washington Post:

Justice Dept. makes 1st arrest in BP oil spill; ex-engineer accused of obstruction of justice

... Kurt Mix, of Katy, Texas, was arrested on two counts of obstruction of justice.

The Justice Department says the 50-year-old Mix is accused of deleting a string of 200 text messages with a BP supervisor in October 2010 that involved internal BP information about how efforts to cap the well were failing.

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Fairbanks, Alaska, April 24, 2012—“The Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE) and the Russian Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg Russia have the earliest collections of Kodiak baskets, grass and spruce root, in the world,” said Sven Haakanson, executive director of the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository.In 2010, Haakanson traveled with six Native weavers to St. Petersburg to study the well preserved baskets, collected by Russian explorers in the 1800’s. In turn, “the Alutiiq weavers shared with Russian museum curators what the baskets were made of, how they were made and to weave in more stories about what the baskets mean—more than just an ethnographic piece,” said Haakanson. The Frontier Scientist videos feature the weavers telling their stories in seven videos. [Frontier Scientists]The videos showcasing the historic, economic and cultural value of basket weaving are the newest edition to the Frontier Scientists web site. Collecting and Curing Grass explains the price of a blade of grass from the perspective of the basket weaver. Katie Oliver, director of the Kodiak Historical Society’s Baranov Museum, and Sara Squartsoff, former education coordinator for the Alutiiq Museum, describe a brief history of Kodiak basket weaving and community participation in the video titled Teaching and Learning the Art of Basket Weaving [Alutiiq Weavers].A new app created at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) makes the Frontier Scientists (FS) web site available for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. The free, universal app named for the website it highlights is the second app designed by UAF, but the first to make research available to the general public. “By downloading the videos onto your iOS device through the app, it gives you the freedom to watch them at your leisure, anytime, anywhere, and even without an active Internet connection,” said Bob Torgerson, UAF graduate student and one of the developers of the app. The best features of the app are 1) ability to download videos to iPhones, iPads and iPods 2) easy access to ask scientists questions 3) the possibility to locate Frontier Scientists projects on a map. [FS App Link Via iTunes] Check it out, it’s very cool!Since the April 2011 web launch, Frontier Scientists continues to share first person accounts and real time insights from leading archaeologists, grizzly bear biologists, volcano researchers, climate change specialists and other scientists.Fascinating video of current scientific discoveries in some of the Arctic’s most remote and dramatic landscapes are chronicled in short videos, Twitter feeds, blogs and web reports. The research covers these categories:

• Grizzlies
• Petroglyphs
• Paleo-Eskimo
• Cook Inlet Volcanoes
• Computational Science
• Alutiiq Weavers
• Climate Change Watch
• Arctic Winter Cruise 2011
• Raven Bluff
• Computational Science

“We want to let travelers, teachers, students, aspiring scientists, and anyone else interested in science feel as if they are with scientists as they track grizzlies or take the temperature of permafrost in a borehole,” explained Liz O’Connell, video director for Frontier Scientists. Visitors to Frontier Scientists can ask questions to our scientists directly; follow some of them on Twitter and Facebook, and converse with scientists on their blogs.Frontier Scientists is funded by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from the National Park Service and 360 Degrees North. Follow us!View Alaska videos at www.FrontierScientists.com.